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Pausing temporarily stops billing on a customer’s subscription or payment plan. It is useful when a customer is not available to be billed for a while, for example while they are traveling, between seasons of your program, or working through a hardship, and you would rather hold their spot than cancel and ask them to purchase again. You can pause indefinitely and resume manually, or set a date and let Kajabi resume billing automatically. Pausing from Kajabi is available for subscriptions and payment plans processed through Kajabi Payments or Stripe. If your customer paid through PayPal, you will not see the pause option. Pause a PayPal subscription manually instead.
This article covers pausing a subscription or payment plan yourself. Your customers can also pause their own subscriptions if you enable that, and a pause a customer starts behaves differently. See How this differs from a pause your customer starts.

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Choose indefinite or duration pausing

A set duration pause saves you from tracking the return date yourself and remembering to resume. You can tell the two apart at a glance: a paused subscription or plan shows a Resuming on badge with the date when it is a set duration pause. A pause with no resume date shown is indefinite.

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Pause a subscription or payment plan

You can start a pause from any of these places:
  • The subscription detail page
  • The payment plan detail page
  • Sales > Subscriptions
  • Sales > Payment Plans

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Pause from a customer’s profile

  1. Open Contacts from your Dashboard
  2. Select your customer, then Open full profile
  3. Open the Purchases tab
  4. Select the subscription or payment plan you want to pause
  5. Open the More Actions menu (…)
  6. Select Pause Payments
  7. Choose Pause until you manually resume this subscription or Pause until a specific date
  8. If you chose a set period, pick the resume date in the calendar
  9. For payment plans, leave Revoke access checked to remove product access during the pause, or uncheck it to let the customer keep access while billing is stopped
  10. Confirm to apply the pause

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What happens during a pause

A pause you start takes effect immediately. From that point until the pause ends:
  • Payments that come due are voided. Kajabi does not attempt to charge the customer while the pause is active.
  • Voided payments do not count toward a payment plan’s total. If a customer has a six payment plan and one payment falls inside the pause, they still owe six payments. Only paid installments count, so the plan finishes later rather than for less.
  • The billing date does not shift. The billing anchor stays where it was, so billing picks up on the customer’s normal schedule when the pause ends.
  • There are no catch-up charges. Nothing is collected retroactively for the paused period. Billing simply resumes.
  • Product access follows the Revoke access setting you chose when you paused.
Note: If there is a past due invoice at the time you pause, pausing does not stop that payment from being retried. Pausing only stops future payments that would come due after the pause begins.
Tip: If a customer wants to skip a single charge and keep their schedule otherwise, updating the billing date moves the next charge without voiding it. Pausing voids the payments inside the pause window. Pick based on whether you want to collect that payment later or not at all.

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Resume or change a pause

A paused subscription or payment plan gives you two options: resume it now, or change when it resumes.

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Resume now

  1. Open the paused subscription or payment plan
  2. Open the More Actions menu (…)
  3. Click Resume Payments
  4. Confirm to resume
Billing restarts on the customer’s normal schedule. This works for both indefinite and set duration pauses, so you can always end a pause early.

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Change the pause duration

If a customer needs more or less time, you do not have to resume and pause again.
  1. Open the paused subscription or payment plan
  2. Open the More Actions menu (…)
  3. Click Resume Payments
  4. In the modal, click Modify Pause Duration
  5. Adjust the resume date, or switch between indefinite and a set duration
  6. Confirm to save
The modal opens with the current pause settings already selected, so you only need to change what is different.

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How this differs from a pause your customer starts

If you turn on customer self-pause, your customers can pause their own subscriptions from their Billing page. The two mechanisms are not interchangeable, and the differences matter when you are looking at a paused subscription and trying to work out what will happen next. The effect on your revenue is the same either way: payments inside the pause are voided and never collected. See Let customers pause their own subscriptions to turn it on and set limits.

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Notifications

When you pause a subscription or payment plan, the email address on your account receives a notification confirming the pause. For a set duration pause, that email includes the resume date and whether product access was revoked. Your customer receives the User Paused Subscription email when the pause begins and the User Resumed Subscription email when billing restarts. For a set-duration pause, these show the resume date. You can customize both templates in your automated email notification settings. Kajabi does not send your customer a reminder before an automatic resume.
A pause your customer starts sends different emails. See Let customers pause their own subscriptions.

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Where paused subscriptions and plans appear

On the subscription or payment plan detail page, a set duration pause shows a badge with the resume date, and the upcoming payment date accounts for the pause. An indefinite pause shows the standard paused status with no resume date.
Paused subscriptions and plans also appear with a Paused status in your Sales > Subscriptions and Sales > Payment Plans tables, and in the Subscription status by offer and Payment plan status by offer reports.

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Pause a PayPal subscription manually

PayPal subscriptions cannot be paused from Kajabi. Suspend the subscription in PayPal, then revoke product access in Kajabi if you want to remove access during the pause.

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Suspend the subscription in PayPal

  1. Log into your PayPal Business or Premier account
  2. Click Activity in the top menu
  3. Open the All transactions dropdown menu
  4. Select Subscription payments
  5. Locate the subscription and click the subscription name
  6. Click Suspend
  7. Confirm and click Suspend Profile
Suspend and reactivate a subscription in PayPal has PayPal’s full instructions.

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Revoke product access in Kajabi

Skip this if you want the customer to keep access while billing is suspended.
  1. Open Contacts from your Dashboard
  2. Select your customer, then Open full profile
  3. Open the Purchases tab
  4. Select the offer, then click Revoke all products
  5. Confirm by clicking Yes, revoke access

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Reactivate a PayPal subscription

  1. Log into your PayPal Business or Premier account
  2. Click Activity in the top menu
  3. Open the All transactions dropdown menu
  4. Select Subscription payments
  5. Locate the subscription and click the subscription name
  6. Click Reactivate
  7. Confirm and click Reactivate Profile
Then return to the customer’s profile in Kajabi and click Resume all products to restore product access.
Tip: Use Tags to keep track of customers you have paused in PayPal, so you can find them again when it is time to reactivate.

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Frequently asked questions

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Does pausing cancel the subscription?

No. The subscription or payment plan stays in place and billing restarts when the pause ends. Pausing is the alternative to cancelling for a customer you expect to keep.

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Will my customer owe less on a paused payment plan?

No. Payments voided during a pause do not count toward the plan, so the customer still owes the full number of payments. The plan finishes later than originally scheduled.

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Can I pause a subscription processed through PayPal?

Not from Kajabi. Suspend it in PayPal instead.

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What happens if I need to extend a pause?

Use Modify Pause Duration to move the resume date. You do not need to resume and pause again.

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Why is a subscription paused when I did not pause it?

If you have turned on customer self-pause, your customers can pause their own subscriptions. A pause a customer starts does not begin immediately; it begins at the end of their current billing cycle. See Let customers pause their own subscriptions.

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Can I pause a payment plan on my customer’s behalf if they cannot do it themselves?

Yes. Payment plans can only be paused by you. Customer self-pause applies to subscriptions only, so a customer with a payment plan will need to ask you.